Think Tanking

The Korean papers, already sensing that Korea has marginalized itself out of any meaningful role in solving the North Korea crisis, are expending much anxiety on what the United States now intends to do about North Korea, with or without their cooperation. I mostly agree with and recommend the Marmot’s analysis of Michael Horowitz’s statement that North Korea is certain to collapse within a year. Prediction is a dangerous business. I once had this, um, friend, who kept extending his tour in Korea, certain that he’d get to play a part in reestablishing law and order north of the DMZ after the inevitable collapse. Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun had other plans. Lesson learned, fantasy exploded, and they eventually made me leave anyway.

Horowitz–and I’ve heard him say this in person on other occasions–places much faith in a military coup. Maybe he knows something I don’t, and a coup certainly is possible. On the other hand, North Korean kremlinology is probably too far beyond our influence to form the basis of a policy, unless it’s mostly faith-based. A coup would be better than the status quo, but it’s far from the best solution, or the one we’re most likely to be able to effect.

My own belief is that we should be directing our efforts at the ordinary people of North Korea. We can and should patiently build a new political consciousness among them, starting with radio drops and training defectors to return home as doctors and agricultural experts, and ratcheting all the way up to material support for guerrillas if necessary. It could take years to pull off, but (1) sowing insecurity will do a lot more to provoke a coup than simply wishing for one or passing out money to complete strangers, (2) it’s an actual plan that includes specific, tangible actions we could actually take, (3) it would build what might end up being the only base of political support for America anywhere in Korea, and (4) it would give the North Korean people ownership of their new government after the old regime is gone.

Horowitz’s tacit invitation for China to invade North Korea is the most disturbing part of his statement; it is more of the Kissingerian great-power politics that earned us lasting unpopularity all over the world. Perhaps Horowitz is succumbing to the temptation to deny South Korea its dream of reunification because it deserves to be denied for the greed, whimsy, and bigotry that have dominated Korea’s politics in recent years. None of that, however, is the fault of the North Korean people, who deserve more from their hour of deliverance than exchanging one set of exploiters for another. Some would argue that idealism may have no place in geopolitics, not even for a proponent of human rights legislation. What some would call idealism, however, I would call a consistent political vision that can rally people, politicians, and governments to a cause that promises something worth taking risks for. People in Beijing, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Mumbai are watching us.

Perhaps Horowitz is simply being realistic about our best hope for removing North Korea as a danger to the United States, and it certainly is that. The countervailing danger is that millions in Asia would see that between America and China, neither side offered them a vision of freedom and prosperity. Absent that, millions would gravitate toward the winning side. That’s usually the side with the advisors in the palace. It could also encourage other nations to do things that will complicate our proliferation problems. And of course, who’s going to stop an emboldened China from selling nukes to Iran and Syria?

Not that I’d see only bad in a Chinese invasion of Korea, because I suspect some of the North Koreans would fight them, and fight them hard. People with nothing to lose often do when denied their only hope of a better future. If you don’t see where I’m going here, back up three paragraphs. The plan works just as well against the Chinese Army, just like it worked against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. A Chinse occupation of North Korea might even temporarily draw South Korea back in our direction, and it would probably obliterate the retrospective bogeyman that keeps Japan as a military protectorate of the United States, because they’d rearm . . . big-time.

But I’m thinking even longer-term here. Our greatest medium-term geopolitical fear should be all-out war with an economically stronger China in twenty to fifty years. If the discontent with an unpopular foreign war provokes the untimely loss of the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, that war becomes much less likely, and one thing dictatorships really don’t do well is lose wars. The scenario still ends up with Korea being one and free, which by all rights it should be, personal grudges and forfeited goodwill aside.

Now here’s a concept: none of the negotiations, bribes, or sanctions have worked against North Korea, so we should simply contain them with more nukes. Cato Institute scholar Ted Carpenter thinks the way to scare North Korea into negotiating its nukes away is to let South Korea and Japan have them, too.

OK, this one is for the slow group, which apparently includes Washington’s finest minds. I’m going to explain one last time how North Korea thinks it can use nukes as a deterrent without merging with the ozone layer. I’ll even reduce this to a simple diagram:

NorK plutonium >> Iran >> Al Qaeda >> Rusty Freighter >> San Francisco

Nork warhead >> Syria >> Hezbollah >> Cargo Plane >> Dallas

As I see it, this leaves no clear way for us to even establish who supplied the stuff and figure out who gets vaporized next. Suddenly, there’s no mutual assured destruction, no deterrence by us against them, and plenty of deterrence by them against us. And this M.O. works just as well against Japan, South Korea, or anyone else. North Korea is not run by idiots. A symmetrical nuclear threat is the last thing they would either (1) use, or (2) fear. In fact, a symmetrical nuclear threat will just end up fossilizing their arsenal inside the diplomatic amber of some inevitable arms control agreement. And of course, they’d cheat on that, too.

Carpenter comes close to being right nevertheless, because Japan and South Korea having nukes would scare the bejeezus out of China. For the record, I’m all for giving them to Taiwan and Singapore, too, because after all, we can trust Taiwan and Singapore not to use them. For now, anyway. China might lean very hard on North Korea if it came to that, but the old problem persists: North Korea lies to people, including the Chinese. Unless someone has powers of verification that are completely beyond me, I wouldn’t entrust a U.S. city to that, either.

The only way I can ever see us losing our fear of North Korea selling nukes to terrorists–directly or otherwise–is if the people in power in Pyongyang are not psychotic enough to sell nukes to terrorists. That’s the essential problem Carpenter doesn’t address, and it requires getting Kim Jong Il and most of those who climbed the bloody corporate ladder behind him out of the scenario entirely.